It’s the season of bankruptcies in the beleaguered home furnishings industry, with seemingly every week bringing news of an ailing retailer or struggling manufacturer filing for Chapter 11. This week brought news that two of the more troubled—Big Lots and LL Flooring—are getting new owners, saving them from being chopped to pieces in bankruptcy court. Can the buyers figure out how to run these businesses better than their predecessors?
It won’t be easy.
LL Flooring—once known as Lumber Liquidators—had for a decade been struggling to recover from a tainted product recall. The post-boom home slump was certainly no help, and in filing for Chapter 11 a few weeks ago, the company set itself a deadline of late August to find a new owner. When that passed, it announced it was liquidating.
Then, suddenly, a new buyer surfaced—a familiar face in Thomas Sullivan, who founded the original company but was a victim of the product scandal in 2016. His private equity firm, F9 Investments, emerged to buy LL Flooring, saying it would keep 219 of its existing 400 or so countrywide locations, along with a Virginia distribution center and the brand’s intellectual property.
Sullivan had been critical of current LL management and had in fact tried to buy the company previously but was rebuffed. Now he gets his creation back, albeit as damaged goods that need to find a place in a competitive and stagnant market. Competitors like Home Depot and Lowe’s, and to a lesser extent Floor & Decor, are formidable players in floorcoverings, and LL will have to find a space between big-box pricing and specialty store service—a narrow slot indeed.
The deterioration of the company has been a slow but very steady process, exacerbated by an inconsistent merchandising strategy that saw it go first from an off-price close-out chain to one with its own brands and everyday merchandise, and then back to its off-price roots. The circuitous journey confused both customers and suppliers, and Big Lots, too, found itself in a very crowded spot in the marketplace, with HomeGoods and Homesense on one end and Walmart, Amazon and Wayfair on the other.
When Big Lots filed Chapter 11, it had already announced more than 300 store closings, and confidence was not high that the rest of the approximately 1,400-unit chain wouldn’t follow. But the filing included the news that private equity firm Nexus Capital Management had taken a “stalking horse” position to buy Big Lots if no other suiter emerged.
It was unexpected, but probably the best news the company could have asked for. Nexus already has a number of retail holdings in its portfolio, including Lamps Plus, Dollar Shave Club, Toms and Resident (the holding company for several home DTC brands, including Nectar mattresses). While Nexus has used some classic private equity techniques like cutting costs and closing down marginal businesses, it has also invested in many of its holdings and its owner reputation is more as an operator than as a slash-and-burn flipper.
It has said it will close additional Big Lots stores, but that it plans to pay vendors 100 cents on the dollar its future invoices and continue with a full operating model. There are fewer details on its merchandising strategy, but an informational website distributed to the trade said: “Our customers can continue to find extreme bargains,” which suggests it will pursue an off-price/close-out path.
Both the LL Flooring and Big Lots deals present new ownership with assorted legal hoops to jump through, but if they go as planned, each big retailer will reemerge with a second chance to get it right.
As we said, it still won’t be easy.
Correction: Sept. 19, 2024
This story has been updated to clarify the terms of Big Lots payment plans to vendors which were misstated in the original story.
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Warren Shoulberg is the former editor in chief for several leading B2B publications. He has been a guest lecturer at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business; received honors from the International Furnishings and Design Association and the Fashion Institute of Technology; and been cited by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and other media as a leading industry expert. His Retail Watch columns offer deep industry insights on major markets and product categories.
